The Impact

Thirteen Reasons Why I’m Just Not Strong Enough

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We all have our way of coping with different situations in our life; we write, we blog, we run, we drink, we smoke. We do anything that can numb some or any kind of pain.

In the new Netflix original, Thirteen Reasons Why, the kind of topics that are discussed, are the kind of topics that are extremely current and perfect for the time, and perfect for our generation.

I legitimately just started watching the show, and I’m about four episodes deep. And I have to say, I can’t continue watching it. I know I’m not alone when I say that I didn’t have the best high school experience. I went through my own s**t, and it wasn’t pretty for most of it. But I know for a fact that others have been through much worse than I have.

I may not relate too much to the main character Hannah Baker, who is a good person, and just has bad things happen to her, but I can relate to Clay Jensen. The person that has anxiety, is socially awkward, an only child, and doesn’t have too many friends.

I have my close group of friends now, and I had a few close ones in high school.

But I used to be that person. I was never good at making new friends, and was always socially awkward.

I mean for the first few weeks of high school, I was the only person sitting by myself at lunch. No one cared to ask if I wanted to sit with them, and I didn’t want to impose on the one friend I did make within that first week of school. Everyone knew someone. I knew people, they knew me. They just weren’t my friends. They may have known me, they just didn’t want anything to do with me.

As I’m watching this show, I had to stop myself because it honestly is too painful for me to watch. I’m an emotional person in general, but I try to hide it. I may not be that good at it, but I try.

As I’m watching the character Clay listen to the tapes sent to him by Hannah, the girl who committed suicide, I see myself in him, in a strange deja vu type of way. In my mind, I know that it’s a brilliant concept for a show, especially in the binge watching era, but my mind and my heart are two different things.

As I try to continue, I feel my emotions building up, and I feel myself holding back tears. I feel the struggle.

People say that it’s such an amazing show, and I agree, it is. It’s just not for me.

I see the parents in the show struggle with the loss of their daughter, and it honestly hurts. I’ve gone through a period in my life when I just didn’t know what I wanted; I was being a teenager. But there were a few moments that were touch and go in my life.

At that age, I didn’t know how to handle anything. I mean, I never contemplated suicide, I just wanted to be invisible. I wanted to live life to the fullest, just not as myself.

I was always on some sort of edge. I knew in the back of my mind that everything was going to be okay at one point, but I just didn’t know when that point was going to be. And it was hard to get through certain days.

As I was watching this powerful show, I found myself going back to the mindset I had in high school.

And I don’t like it.

It makes me feel uneasy, and not safe. I can’t explain the unsafe part.

I just feel it.

I feel like I’m back in my teenage years, and I can’t seem to come back to the reality where I’m actually in my twenty’s.

Thirteen Reasons Why is a very powerful show. It may just be that I’m too much of an emotional person to watch this show, or it’s just simply too powerful.

Now I’m not sure if I’m just too emotional because it’s almost time for me to close a chapter in my life, that I may not be ready to close, or it’s just the emotional part of my brain. That’s for me to figure out.

I do appreciate that Netflix has released a show about these topics that are to touchy for people and important to talk about.

I don’t know about y’all, but how many teenagers do you know that actually talk to people about their bullying, and victimizing. I know I don’t know that many. Or any for that matter.

It’s something that needs to be talked about. It’s something that needs to be brought to people’s attention.

You know the phrase, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”

Yeah, that phrase is a line of bulls**t. Words hurt. People don’t think before they speak.

That is why I appreciate this show and what it is doing by bringing this into light. I may not be able to sit through and watch what a fictional character has went through, but I can stand by this show and what it means for people everywhere.

People will say anything to feed their own ego, or save their own asses from being thrown into the fire. That’s why I always keep my mouth closed, until it’s something that goes too far.

I may not be the person to watch this show, but I highly recommend it for anyone and everyone.

I’ve grown up as a person, and I know that people are just immature, and pathetic. But there are girls and boys out there going through high school, and it’s the worst time of their life at the moment.

There was a poster in an episode that I managed to get through that said, “You are not alone.”

And that poster is right, you are not alone, there will always be someone there to talk to. I may have had to learn the hard way, but I learned.

Thank you Netflix, and Thirteen Reasons Why, for giving us something that we can learn from, even though I’m not strong enough to get through it myself.